


Talking Bird

by shootybangbang (peonylanterns)



Category: Red Dead Redemption
Genre: Eventual Smut, F/M, Gore, No Spoilers, Short Chapters, Slow Burn, currently written as a series of shitposts interspersed by seriousposts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2019-09-07 19:10:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 9,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16859722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peonylanterns/pseuds/shootybangbang
Summary: He grabs you from behind the moment the main road is out of sight, his hand over your mouth as he yanks you against him, your back against his front and his arm wrapped securely around your waist.“If you scream,” Arthur says, “I’ll snap your neck.”———Critique heavily encouraged.





	1. In which you debate the entertainment value of public hangings

**Author's Note:**

> This fic will probably devolve into smut at some point.

Public hangings have a certain small town charm to them, you decide. 

Back in San Francisco (or St Denis, even), hangings are so commonplace that it takes an axe murderer to draw a crowd. The usual audience will be there, of course - old men with nothing better to do, horrified tourists, etc… but unless the crime is particularly sordid or the criminal especially notorious, the residents tend to treat the hanging schedule like the weather report. That is, something to check every week, but nothing to go out of your way to pay attention to.

Here in Strawberry though, hangings are infrequent enough that half the town’s gathered in the street. The offender is a local - some idiot who shot several people in a bar fight. He’s weeping openly on the platform, and the crowd is jeering at him with all the enthusiasm of a group of children at a circus. 

People are jostling each other to get a better look at the accused, so you’re forced to shove your way through the crowd, squeezing through the throng and holding your arm in front of you to clear the way. Without looking, you carelessly knock your shoulder against someone’s back.

“Excuse me,” you say, glancing backwards. 

The man grunts and makes brief eye contact before he - 

Wait a second. Shit.

It’s Arthur Morgan.

Don’t panic. Maybe he doesn’t recognize you. He was half unconscious when he saw your face.

“Sorry about that,” you say sheepishly, forcing a smile. You wave apologetically.

The man raises his eyebrows, but there’s no spark of recognition in his eyes. He turns away to give his attention back to the gallows.

When you finally free yourself from the sea of spectators, you heave a sigh of relief and start walking briskly back to your hotel room.

You’re still slightly shaken from the chance encounter in the crowd. It’s with Arthur Morgan still on your mind that you take a quick shortcut through the narrow alley between the saloon and the gunsmith.

So it’s ironic, then, that it’s Arthur Morgan who grabs you from behind the moment the main road is out of sight, his hand over your mouth as he yanks you against him, your back against his front and his arm wrapped securely around your waist.

“If you scream,” he says, “I’ll snap your neck.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Extreme artistic liberties taken with Strawberry city planning.
> 
>  
> 
> [shootybangbang.tumblr.com](https://shootybangbang.tumblr.com/)


	2. In which you learn stealing from outlaws is ill-advised

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the first time in my life, I am rapid fire posting chapters instead of taking 5000 years to deliberate whether something is good enough or fits the plot well, so if you see any glaring inconsistencies/errors, let me know.

You keep yourself very, very still. Your heart is pounding hard enough that it hurts and every fiber of your body is telling you to try and twist out of his grasp, but you know that if you so much as make a sudden move, this man will probably break your arm.

“I know you, don’t I?”

You frantically shake your head.

“Don’t lie to me, girl.” His voice is low and dangerous, and you’re reminded again of the ridiculously high bounty that this man’s name carries. “You’ve got somethin’ of mine, and you’re gonna tell me exactly where it is.”

He removes his hand from your mouth. You gasp for breath, panting hard as you try to calm yourself down.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you say desperately, putting on as thick an accent as you can muster. “Please mister, you’re hurting me - ”

“Wrong answer.” His hand is around your throat now - not tight enough to completely cut off airflow, but certainly tight enough to get his point across. “Now I need those bonds,” he growls in your ear. “But I ain’t gonna die if I can’t get at ‘em. You know what that means, don’t you?”

You’d like to tell him that you have a pretty good idea what the implications are, but a lack of oxygen is making that difficult.

“Means I’ve got very little incentive for keepin’ you alive if you don’t give me what I want.” He loosens his hold enough to let you take several deep, shuddery breaths. “Now talk.”

For once in your life, self preservation manages to trump your miserly instincts. You tell him the truth.

“St Denis,” you gasp. “The bank… my safety deposit box - ”

His hand is back around your throat. “You trying to play me for a fool?”

“I fucking live there!” you manage to squeak before he tightens his hold again. “Look, I’ll take you to my hotel room. I’ll let you go through my stuff. I don’t have it on me, I  _ swear _ .”

He’s silent for a moment, and you become uncomfortably aware of the press of his body against your own. He smells like smoke and sweat, dust and prairie grass - the ubiquitous scent of the Heartlands. And the weight of his arm around your torso calls to mind the - 

Arthur suddenly releases you, then shoves you away from him with enough force that you’re sent to your hands and knees. “Lead the way, then.”


	3. In which things get worse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The dashes are there bc I am shit at scene transitions.

Your new shirt is now missing a button. Your pants are muddy and scraped at the knees. And Arthur Morgan, the reason behind your recent misfortunes, is casually walking beside you.

“I don’t think I need to tell you what’ll happen if you try to get the law’s attention on this,” he says quietly.

“I’m aware,” you respond, flicking a clod of dirt off your sleeve. 

Now that you’re able to get a good look at him, you notice that this man is literally covered in guns. One pistol. One sawn off shotgun. Two rifles. A goddamn bandolier slung across his chest. 

Meanwhile, you currently have… exactly zero guns on your person. Not that it would’ve done you any good to have one, you muse. Pulling a gun on this man would almost certainly result in you getting half your face blown off.

———

Arthur follows closely behind you as you enter the hotel lobby.

“Welcome back!” says the receptionist.

You give the receptionist a look of mute desperation, which goes wholly ignored. The man suddenly becomes unusually preoccupied with wiping down the front counter. He wears on his face the universal expression of “just minding my own business please for the love of god don’t involve me in this”.

———

You quickly realize that the reason Arthur wants look through your things isn’t because he suspects you have the bonds on you - it’s because he wants to see if you have anything worth stealing.

So far he’s pocketed your cash, your fountain pen, and the gun you kept in your valise. He’d also begun to flip through your notebook, but had quickly given up when he realized it was written in an incomprehensible mixture of English and Chinese. 

While he scours your room for valuables, you sit on the floor with your arms tied behind your back. “You’re wasting your time,” you say. “If I were rich, I’d be staying in the nicer hotel down the street.”

He ignores you.

You sigh in irritation. “God. I should’ve let you bleed out on the plains.”

“Probably would’ve been in your best interest,” Arthur says, feeling around the corners of your suitcase one last time. Then suddenly he stops, wrinkling his brow and sniffing the air. He runs a finger along the suitcase’s satin lining and inspects the residue.

“Well then,” he says, looking at you with the barest hint of a smile on his lips. “Mind tellin’ me what a drug mule’s doin’ all the way up here in Strawberry?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry guys. Looks like you’re Chinese.  
> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	4. In which you don’t get punched in the face

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter’s a bit longer than usual.

“A drug mule? What?”

“Why else would a nice girl like you be all the way out here with… hmm…” Arthur examines the suitcase lining again. “Smells like about enough opium for a drug den.”

Though you handed the product over yesterday, you haven’t changed out the lining from your case yet. Like an idiot, you’ve been too busy messing around in the woods and telling yourself that you’d do it tomorrow.

“You  _ did _ say that you live over in St Denis.” He puts his hand to his mouth and pretends to look thoughtful. “And from I’ve heard, they  _ are _ crackin’ down hard on those Chinatown opium dens. Wonder how much money the sheriff’d be willin’ to cough up if I turn you in.”

“You wouldn’t,” you say quietly, but you can’t hide the slight quaver in your voice. And you know he’s caught on to it, because the corner of his mouth tugs upwards.

“Yeah, you’re right. I wouldn’t.” He crouches beside you, tilts your face towards him by pressing a finger to the underside of your jaw. “Because you’re not bad lookin’, for an Oriental. I’d make much more if I sold you to a fuckin’ whorehouse.”

A vague flash of a red-lit San Francisco street flits briefly through your memory.

“So for your sake darlin’, you better be telling the truth about those bonds, ‘cause I’m gonna be getting my money’s worth either way.”

“I saved your  _ life _ ,” you murmur, giving him a look of pure disgust.

Arthur laughs at this. “Don’t worry, I ain’t gonna give you the chance to make that mistake again.”

———

Being hogtied is unpleasant. Being thrown over a man’s shoulder while hogtied is more unpleasant still.

When Arthur comes downstairs to load you onto his horse, the receptionist politely asks him what the fuck he thinks he’s doing.

“Shot her husband,” he says, patting your backside the way one would a prize heifer. “They’re offerin’ a good thirty bucks for this one.”

“Thirty?” The man had snorted. “Shit, I’d  _ pay  _ thirty for one Chinaman less.”

Someone in the lobby laughs at this and agrees. Arthur, to his credit, merely shrugs at the statement and leaves.

———

“Is this really necessary?” 

“No,” says Arthur, tightening the knots securing you to the back of his horse. “But I’m doing it anyway.”

“Please,” you beg. “Just let me sit on the horse. I’m not gonna try anything.”

He checks the contents of his satchel. You catch a glimpse of your notebook’s blue cover amongst the bill folds and wrapped provisions.

“You can even keep my arms tied. I’ll cooperate, ok?”

Arthur reloads his bolt action rifle and slings it across his back.

“I won’t try to escape,” you plead, your voice increasingly desperate. “I’ll do anything you tell me to. Just please,  _ please _ don’t tie me to your goddamn horse.”

He continues ignoring you. The nonchalance with which he readies himself for the ride back to St Denis infuriates you - so much so that when you catch a glimpse of him casually eating a piece of salted venison as he untethers the horse, the mounting fear and frustration that you’ve been holding in this entire time reaches a flash point and explodes.

“You cow-fucking bastard - the next time someone stabs you, I hope you get lockjaw and die in your own shit! I should’ve left you to rot out there as a favor to humanity, you ungrateful, traitorous - ”

“Ungrateful?” He sounds amused. “Lady, the fact you ain’t missin’ a couple teeth right now is proof of my appreciation.”

“What a gentleman you are! Thank you  _ so much _ for not punching me in the face. Tell me sir, are you always this courteous?”

“If I were you,” he says, swinging himself onto the saddle. “I’d consider it a limited time offer.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What would you guys prefer: short, frequent updates or long, infrequent updates? 
> 
> Feel free to leave me an answer here or send me a message at shootybangbang.tumblr.com.


	5. In which throwing up on a horse results in an immediate improvement to your living conditions

Your face gets smacked against the horse’s dust-covered flank with each galloping step it takes. The angle at which you’ve been tied is making the blood rush to your head. The ground below rushes past at a dizzying speed, and the very sight of the blurred grass and dirt is making you nauseous.

All in all, it is safe to say that you are having an extremely unpleasant experience.

At first you’d spent the journey shouting increasingly less creative insults at Arthur, beginning with elaborate phrases such as “you unwashed clay-eating hick” and transitioning to crude, yet classic iterations of “fuck you”. The only rewards you gain from your efforts are a sore throat and a half-hearted threat to have you gagged.

You realize he’s been avoiding the main road, probably so as to not attract any unwanted attention from passerby. He guides the horse through the woods, weaving through the treeline and sidestepping particularly close set thickets. This is unfortunate for you, because the constant twists and turns are making you feel increasingly sick.

“Morgan,” you rasp. “Slow down.”

He glances at you from behind his shoulder. “Why?”

“Because if you don’t, I’m gonna throw up all over your goddamn horse.”

“Woman, you do that and I’ll make you wish you -”

You make an exaggeratedly loud retching sound. Arthur curses under his breath and pulls the horse to an abrupt stop.

At first you were only pretending to vomit, but the sudden sway of motion tips you into actual nausea. 

You throw up on the horse.

———

The riverbank is sandy and warm. From where you lie, you can see geese flying in the distance, the shimmering ripples of fish in the water. Diablo Ridge is a dark green smudge along the horizon.

It’s almost idyllic enough to make you forget how much your back hurts from Arthur dropping you on the ground. 

Nearby, you can hear him soothing his horse as he leads her into the water. “You’re alright, girl,” he croons. “I know, I know… the water’s cold, but I’ll just be a minute longer.”

Maybe if you’re lucky, the horse will kick him in the face and cause him enough brain damage that he’ll be convinced to let you go. 

Out of the corner of your eye, you can see him feeding the horse an apple from his satchel as he brushes her clean. Arthur pats her neck and speaks to her in a soft, gentle voice. From afar, you catch snippets of “good girl” and “that’s better, ain’t it?”

Your recently emptied stomach growls. Your recently bruised ego contemplates the edibility of grass.

———

When he pulls out the knife, your first reaction is to panic.

“Wait, are you really that mad that I - ”

Arthur kneels beside you and cuts the bindings around your ankles, then roughly pulls you to your feet. Before you can fully register what’s going on, he has his hand around your throat again.

“Only reason I’m doin’ this is because you’ve finally managed to convince me how pathetic you are,” he says in a low, dangerous voice. “But prove me wrong and I’ll make sure you regret it.”

“You're not gonna kill me,” you retort, probably out of some kind of suicidal instinct. “You won’t get your money’s worth that way.”

“Course I wouldn’t kill you. I’d just break your arms.” He wraps his other hand around one of your bound wrists and presses his thumb into its underside hard enough to make you cringe. “So you gonna be good for me? Or should I just save us both some time and break ‘em now?”

You swallow. “I’ll be good.”

“Then let’s get goin’,” he says. “Got a three day ride ahead.”


	6. In which your experience with horses continues to deteriorate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guess what guys i’ve never ridden a horse in my life

__Arthur hauls you up onto the horse with the same ease of a man lifting a child, then swings himself onto the saddle behind you. He reaches across you to grab the reins, his arms brushing against your shoulders as he draws the leather taut and flicks his wrist. It’s a position uncomfortably reminiscent of an embrace, and had he not just threatened you with bodily harm and called you pathetic, you’d probably be flustered. Instead, you’re just irritated.

“Couldn’t I sit behind you instead?”

“You’re an idiot if you think I’d turn my back on you without your ankles tied,” he says. 

———

Having never ridden a horse without the use of your arms before, you soon come to realize the secondary reason he had you sit in front. 

With just your knees to keep you steady and no stirrups to secure your feet, keeping your balance becomes a miserable struggle against gravity and momentum. About two minutes after securing your rightful place on the saddle, you find yourself sliding off the right side of the horse.

“Oh my god,” you say in a panicked voice, as you desperately lean your body to the left in an attempt to center yourself. “Oh my  _ fucking  _ god, this is so unbelievably  _ stupid —” _

“Hey, watch it.” Arthur stops your slow, humiliating descent by grabbing your shoulder and shoving you upright. You’ve never been so glad to be manhandled in your life.

Not long afterwards, you find yourself following the same downward trajectory. Only this time, you begin slipping off the left side of the horse instead.

Arthur aggressively shoves you upright again. “Why the hell did you ask to sit up here if you don’t know how to ride a horse?”

“I do know how to ride a horse,” you snap. “But I also usually have  _ arms _ to hold on with.”

“Look, you gotta stop tensin’ your legs like that.” He grabs your thigh, pulls it towards himself to adjust your stance, and you jerk your entire body away from him as though you’ve been burned. The sudden motion upsets your balance, and he’s forced to catch you by the shoulder again. This time though, he doesn’t let go.

“Easy,  _ easy _ now… calm down, girl.” he says, and his tone is smoother this time, softer, as if he’s speaking to a frightened animal. “I ain’t tryin to do anything improper.”

The weight of his hand, the gentle pressure of him holding you still and steady in the midst of your reflexive panic, somehow manages to quiet you. Your fists unclench. The tense set of your jaw loosens. And despite the fact that not thirty minutes ago this man threatened to break your arms, you relax. 

“You gonna listen to me now?” Arthur asks.

You swallow hard, then nod. 

“I’m gonna move your leg, alright?”

After a brief hesitation, you nod again.

“Okay then,” he says, and this time he reaches for you slowly, cautiously. “Don’t grip with your knees. Let your leg hang straight — like this.”

Again he pulls your thigh backwards, and the faintest stir of intimacy, so slight that you write it off as mere anxiety, flits through your mind. Then Arthur taps the ridge of your spine, telling you to sit up straight as he does so, and you instantly stiffen in your seat, arching your back away from him.

“And stay like that,” you hear him say from behind. “Because the next time you start fallin’ off, I ain’t gonna bother catching you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one got too long, so I chopped it in half. Hopefully the next bit will be out soon.
> 
> Might start posting longer chapters, but probably nothing over 1000 words.


	7. In which Arthur continues to be rude, but less so than usual

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This series is slowly shifting from pure shitpost -> seriouspost with a healthy dose of shitpost

The hard angle of your shoulder in his hand put Arthur in mind of a sparrow he’d found a few months back, when the gang was still stationed up north.  

He’d been out tracking deer, crouching low to examine a pair of cloven prints, when he noticed the frantic rustle of leaves near the lower branches of a raspberry bush. A weak and agitated chirping rose from below the brambles, rising in pitch as he reached inside and closed his hand over a small, feathered mass.

It was a hurt sparrow, its pinions torn and its left wing bent backwards at an unnatural angle. Yet despite its injuries, the bird fluttered its wings with a violent desperation, flapping hard enough that he could feel its brittle bones threatening to splinter against the cage of his fingers. So strong was its instinct for escape that in the final throes of its insensible fear, its tiny heart beat until its rhythm reached an impossible crescendo — and then stopped altogether. 

And though he could not feel the throb of your pulse when he held you still, he knew that were he to put his hand to your neck there would have been the same rapid rush of blood, the individual beats bleeding into each other and coalescing into a jagged thrum of panic. 

_ Why now? _ he’d wondered.  _ Why not when I had my hand around her throat? When I held the knife to her skin? _

Because you had been afraid then too, yes — but your fear had carried with it a distinct sense of self-preservation. Yet that sharp recoil from his touch, wrenching your body away from his with such exaggerated force that you nearly threw yourself from the horse, had been like that sparrow’s instinct for escape at its own expense. A distillation of perception to two points: the stimulus and your rejection of it.

Fragile little thing, prone to self-destruction. He absently wonders if you’ll meet the same kind of end: inadvertently, by your own hand.

Not that it’s any of his business.

———

From your new vantage point you’re finally able to fully appreciate your surroundings. 

The yellow afternoon light tints West Elizabeth in shades of gold and umber. Dense thickets of spruce and pine, with clustered white birch scattered in between, their pale trunks gleaming through the conifers like glimpses of bone. A good deal of moss blanketing the rocks and overgrown roots. The occasional violet flower… Snowdrop? Iris? Crocus? Too far away to tell —

“What’s your name?”

As if snapped from a reverie, you make a small, confused noise and sit up ramrod straight. “What?”

“Your name.” Arthur says the words slowly, as if speaking to someone of profoundly limited intelligence. “What is it?”

“My name,” you echo, voice absently thoughtful. “Yeah, I suppose you wouldn’t remember.”

“I’m guessin’ you told it to me when I was half dead in the prairie?”

“Something like that.”

“You gonna remind me or no?’

You look longingly at his canteen. “If you give me some water.”

When he unfastens the canteen from his saddlebag and twists off the cap, you swallow hard, throat aching in anticipation… then you scowl as he raises it to his own mouth and drinks from it with loud, greedy gulps.

“You really think you’re in a position to make demands?” Arthur asks, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“I think I might  _ really  _ hate you,” you reply, and he laughs in response.

“Relax,” he says, putting the mouth of the canteen to your lips. “Just playin’ with ya.”

———

If you’re to be perfectly honest with yourself, you’ve got to admit that he’s shown you an unusual amount of courtesy. 

From a practical standpoint, there’s no real reason for him to let you sit up front. You haven’t eaten in nearly five hours - you wouldn’t be able to throw up on his horse again even if you wanted to. And even though your arms are still tied behind your back, there’s still an increased risk of escape with you in this position. The most pragmatic thing to do would have been to gag you, then leave you hogtied in the back. 

You don’t think his leniency is due to the fact that you’re a woman. At this point in your life you’ve no more illusions of classic chivalry. And besides, you highly doubt that a man like him would adhere to such ideals anyway. 

Nor do you think it’s pity that’s convinced him to let you ride with him. An outlaw quickly moved to compassion is not an outlaw that survives for very long. And you have a feeling that Arthur Morgan has been an outlaw for a long, long time.

No, you surmise he’s doing this because some shred of decency in him, buried under the layers of bluster and unnecessary aggression, recognizes that he owes you. It’s the weight of that debt that’s been protecting you so far, you guess. Guilt, obligation, duty -- no matter which of those factors might be in play here, it’s enough to afford you small kindnesses. 

And for that, you’re grateful.

———

“Just call me Lee,” you say when you’ve drunk your fill. “It’s what most Americans call me, most of the time.”


	8. In which the author’s username finally becomes relevant

“Saving a man’s life makes you beholden to him,” Feng had said to you before he died ( _ before they murdered him, before they shot him down in the streets like a dog and let him drown in his own blood).  _ “So be careful who you show compassion to.”

“Shouldn’t it be the other way around?” you’d asked.

“You would think so,” he said, smiling wanly and setting his long, ivory pipe down beside him. The scent of opium, bittersweet and sharp, lingered in the haze of smoke diffusing across the room, laid like a veil between the two of you. “But remember — if you save a man’s life, do you not become complicit in all of his future sins as well?”

———

You realize, watching the blood pool beneath the dead man’s head, that you haven’t been as afraid of Arthur as you should be.

“Idiots should’ve let me pass.” He says it with an easy nonchalance, as if the finality of a man’s death and the act of its taking holds no real weight for him. You feel him shift behind you, holstering his gun and swinging himself off the horse before reaching upwards to pat you on the shoulder. “Behave yourself, now.”

He doesn’t even need to threaten you this time. The mute look of shock on your face must be enough indication that you’ve been sufficiently cowed.

“You killed them,” you say in a small voice.

“That I did,” Arthur turns the man he’d shot in the face — the one named Connor — onto his back and starts rifling through his coat pockets. The corpse’s head lolls to the side, empty eyes staring sightlessly at you as blood drips from its nose in a slow, red stream. 

“You… you could’ve just rode down the river to the other crossing—”

“Sure.” He moves on to the supply wagon, shoving another corpse off its side before dragging a metal lock box out from behind an overturned crate. “But then there’d still be three too many O’Driscolls runnin’ around. Way I see it, I’m doin’ this world a service.”

_ That’s disgusting _ , is what you want to say, but the words catch like lead in your throat, forced down by a sudden thrill of fear. How stupid - how frightfully naive you’ve been. 

———

There had been three men total. Two hanging back with a wagon full of supplies, and one standing guard.

The corpse — no. Connor. His name was Connor. Say his name. Remember it. You’ve no right to the comfort of anonymity, small as it may be.

Connor was the one who stopped you on the bridge. Tall, lanky, probably not much older than twenty, he’d aimed the shotgun at you and Arthur both when you’d approached the crossing.

“The O’Driscolls got this bridge,” he shouted. “Clear off!”

Arthur made a short, dismissive noise in the back of his throat from behind you, then pulled the horse to a stop, calling out, “Give you boys the count of three to get outta my way.”

The other two men had put out their cigarettes and straightened up, grinning and elbowing each other at the prospect of a fight.

“One,” said Arthur. 

“Last chance to run away, old man,” Connor replied, making a show of drawing the hammer of his gun back. 

Instead of continuing the countdown, Arthur had roughly shoved you flat against the horse’s back, swiftly drawn his own gun from its holster, and shot Connor in the face.

The rest was a blur of blood and noise: Connor crumpling like a broken marionette, dead before he hit the ground. Someone screaming the dead man’s name, the silver gleam of the revolver in Arthur’s hand. A brief exchange of gunfire, the soft thump of bodies falling on wet grass. Then the eerie calm afterwards, the corpses in silent repose.

———

As Arthur inspects the contents of the makeshift O’Driscoll camp, you catch a glimpse of motion beneath the wagon.

There’s a fourth man lying on his stomach. He’s young and terrified, clutching a worn pistol with a white-knuckled fist. When you make eye contact with him, he flinches and draws a shaky bead on you.

A quick glance at Arthur confirms that he’s much more interested in the canned food he’s found than he is in paying any attention to you. So you lock eyes with the O’Driscoll boy again and slowly shake your head, mouthing the word “ _ don’t _ ”. Then you flick your eyes towards Arthur and nod briefly in his direction. “ _ He’ll kill you _ .”

From behind a stack of crates, you hear Arthur’s low pitched whistle. “Damn,” he says. “Those bastards were carryin’ some pretty decent money.”

The O’Driscoll boy is still gripping his gun, but its barrel is angled down now, pointing harmlessly at the ground.

“How much longer you gonna stay here?” you snap in Arthur’s direction. “Someone’s gonna ride by any second now.”

“Alright, alright. Keep your pants on, girl.” He tucks a thick fold of bills into his satchel before making his way towards you. “Didn’t realize you were so eager to —”

The moment Arthur comes within range, the O’Driscoll boy turns the gun on him and fires. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is as much a cliffhanger for you as it is for me bc I have no idea what should happen next ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	9. In which Arthur's predilection towards moonshine saves both your lives

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve rewritten this chapter about 10 times, so I am at last giving up and throwing it out into the void.
> 
> [content warning: gore]

The loud crack of gunfire rings through the crossing, the valley of the river magnifying the sound until it resounds like thunder.

The momentum of the shot knocks Arthur backwards. You hear him utter a surprised grunt when the bullet reaches him — then nothing.

Panting hard, the O’Driscoll boy crawls out from beneath the wagon on his hands and knees. His clothes are damp with mud and sweat, his eyes wide with a mixture of fear and triumph. “Bastard,” he says bitterly, then spits on the ground.

Arthur isn’t moving.

This isn’t what you wanted. This isn’t what you wanted at all. A cold, numb feeling wraps itself around your heart and drags it into your stomach.

“No,” you murmur. The words come out first as a whisper, building up into a desperate cry as your panic rises high in your throat. “No, no, no — please get up, Arthur _please —”_

But then the pistol is pointed at you.

“Huh?” you stare down the barrel of the gun with the uncomprehending stupidity of a lamb being shown a knife. “Why’re you —”

“I’m sorry, ma’am.” There’s a note of genuine regret in the boy’s voice. “No witnesses.”

You feel the blood spatter across your face before you actually hear the bang.

———

Though you’ve seen blood pooling beneath corpses before ( _trailing in little drips across blue tile, smeared against the wall in long, rust-colored streaks_ ), it’s always held a measure of distance from the killing itself. Because that was dead blood, old blood. Cooling blood.

The thick, warm spray soaking into your shirt is still hot with recent life, only seconds removed from a living body and blessed with remnants of circulating breath. The boy lies crumpled before you, the shattered remains of his head scattered across the ground in a gruesome array of brain and bone.

Arthur, though grimacing and clutching at his chest, is struggling to his feet. “Shit,” he gasps, and when he braces himself against the ground with both hands, you see that the hole in his jacket is miraculously clean, darkening with spilt moonshine instead of blood. Gently, reverently, as if removing a holy relic from inside his coat, he pulls out the ruptured metal flask that took the bullet in his place.

A painful, bubbling mix of conflicting emotion wells up behind your eyes. “What the fuck,” you say in a soft, unbelieving voice, then immediately break into tears.

“The hell you cryin’ for?” Wincing as he walks, Arthur holsters his gun and staggers back to his horse with uneven steps. He keeps one hand pressed to his rib cage, applying pressure with the cautious touch of a man trying to hold together a broken piece of pottery.

“I don’t know,” you sob, and in your mouth is the taste of salt and iron, the dead boy’s blood on your lips and tongue. _Complicit, complicit,_ the metallic tang seems to whisper, speaking its blame into the everpresent guilt lurking in the well of your heart.

Guilt for the living, guilt for the dead, guilt for the relief you feel for both. And a dull, hollow feeling of helplessness that reverberates so intensely in your chest that it drowns out any measure of rationality you have left.

“I’m — I’m _sorry_.” you hear yourself admit. “I should’ve told you he was there, but I —”

He narrows his eyes. “You knew? You were _tryin’_ to get me killed?”

“That’s not… I didn’t —”

Arthur wraps his hand around your jaw and wrenches you towards him so that you’re forced to look him in the eyes. “If you ever, _ever_ pull that kind of shit again, I’ll kill you. Understand?”

“He had a gun pointed at me,” you retort, anger rising in your throat with all the bitterness of bile. “What was I supposed to do? Get shot for _you_?”

The hard look in his eyes makes you wonder if he’s going to hit you. But then he sighs and lets go, dropping his hand to his side as he glances again at the corpse sprawled out in the dirt.

“You woulda been dead either way,” he says flatly.

“Yes,” you say. Your next words go unspoken. _And maybe it would’ve been better that way_.

Again, the tears come. You can’t feel the sun on your skin or the rope around your wrists — all you know is the steady drip of foreign blood down your chin, the low buzz of gathering flies over split flesh —

The horse lurches forward beneath you, and you startle from your morbid reverie. Arthur has the reins in his hands, pulling the palomino towards the river.

“We got some time still,” he says. His back is to you. The angle of his hat hides his eyes from view. “Get you cleaned up some.”


	10. In which your day continues to be awful

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can’t believe I’ve written like 10 chapters and we’re still on day 1
> 
> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

“I’m not gonna hurt you,” he says, raising the damp cloth to your face. “So don’t flinch.”

You shut your eyes and scrunch up your nose as he passes the wet bandanna over your cheek and forehead. He wipes off the gore with quick, delicate motions, his fingers tracing over the curve of your lip and the sharp angle of your jaw.

“That your first time seein’ a man get killed?”

Arthur wrings the cloth over the riverbank, and the droplets it sheds are pale red. You watch as the sand and scattered crabgrass swallow the diluted blood.

“No,” you answer. In the back of your mind is a litany of names, a whispered list of the dead.

———

Though it was his wife’s name Feng spoke in his final moments, it had been you who witnessed his last, rattling breaths, you who would carry the memory of the red froth at his lips to your grave. His blood on your shirt, the dead weight of him clutched in your arms, the lingering touch of his unmoving hand in your own — his love may have never been yours to possess, but was this not a form of tenderness as well?

The most bitter, jealous reaches of your soul have always taken cold comfort in the fact that this intimacy was yours, and yours alone, to savor.

———

There is something sacred in bearing witness to another man’s death. A grisly communion - whatever it is the dead know, you’re held privy to it for a single, palpitating moment. And in less than a heartbeat, it is over. As with all departures, there is a finality in it. Something precious slipping through, the solidity and certainty of life sublimated to a thin vapor.

If that is communion, then is causing a man’s death a kind of a covenant? If giving life is considered divine, then is taking it not equally so? The trajectory of the bullet, from the finger on the trigger to the shattering of bone, draws an invisible line as it cuts through the air, linking victim and perpetrator like a red string of fate. The promise of eternity wrapped in the plunge of a knife, in the embrace of the hangman’s noose, in a mouthful of cyanide.

And you may have never touched the gun yourself, but it was your hands that put everything into place. In saving Arthur Morgan’s life, you’d marked others for death.

( _spiced smoke in a dimly lit room, the glazed eyes of the lotus eaters, all dreaming the same opium dream, all dying the same slow death - was that not your doing as well?_ )

———

When he leads the horse back up the hill and close to the main road, you can hear the sound of crows gathering over the bridge. They alight upon the corpses, folding away their dark wings with dainty elegance before they begin tearing into dead flesh.

Not ten minutes past, that meat was once a man.

 _A man aiming a gun at my head_ , you remind yourself.

But a man nonetheless.

“Don’t feel too sorry for ‘em,” Arthur says, when he notices you staring. “They knew what they were getting into when they chose this life.”

The act of killing rolls off this man’s shoulders easy as rainwater. He treats it as an inevitability, a cold certainty of this life of continued violence.

“And you? Will you end up like that someday too, dead by the side of the road?”

He lets out a short, humorless laugh. “Probably.”

A brief pause. “So will I, I guess.”

“If you keep on runnin’ opium, then yeah —”

Before he can finish his sentence, the crack of gunfire resounds across the bridge. A bullet lodges itself in the tree beside you, slamming through bark and sending a small shower of splinters across your face.

“Someone get Malachi!” the man on the other side of the river shouts. “They shot Connor and the rest —”

Arthur shoots him so quickly that all you register is the silver blur of his revolver before the other man is clutching at his own neck, trying desperately to staunch the hole in his throat with clasped hands. He swears under his breath as he swings himself back in the saddle, spurring his horse to a gallop and leaning forward to keep his balance, sandwiching you between his chest and the horse’s back.

“Hang on tight,” he says. “Because if you fall off now, I ain’t comin’ back for you.”


	11. In which you do your best to avoid getting thoroughly perforated with bullets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise! I'm not dead!
> 
> Some notes about this chapter:
> 
> 1\. The geography in this is screwy. Probably gonna retcon some things in previous chapters to make some sense of it.
> 
> 2\. I still don't know how guns or horses work. As always, constructive criticism is welcome.

You’ve never had much opportunity to explore the Lemoyne countryside, mostly due to safety concerns (Lemoyne Raiders, the KKK, the possibility of getting stuck in the middle of Braithwaite/Grey crossfire, etc). Which is ironic, considering your current situation.

Dodging bullets on a horse does not make admiring the surrounding landscape easy, but when you crane your neck to catch a glimpse of the fast-approaching riders, it’s the rolling green hills and red dirt that catch your attention first. Thinly spread forest, with copses of maple and oak scattered through… and also eight men on horseback who are almost definitely going to kill you very, very soon.

Because if there is one thing in this bitch of a day that you are certain of, it is that you are going to die. You’re going to get gruesomely murdered by a bunch of unwashed gangsters and nobody’s ever going to find your body.

\------

“How well can you ride?” Arthur shouts over his shoulder. He’s facing away from you, firing off the occasional shot with one hand as he holds the reins with the other.

“Well enough,” you yell back. “Why?”

He grabs you by the arm and holsters his gun. Then he pulls out the knife again.

“What’re you -”

“Don’t move,” he grunts, as he saws through the rope around your wrists. “Grab the reins and get us into the woods.”

You do as he says and yank the reins to the left, forcing the horse to make a hard right as it races towards the treeline. As you do, he quickly slides the knife back into its sheath and reaches instead for the bolt-action rifle slung across his back.

“Brace yourself. Gonna use you to keep myself steady.” 

Arthur rests his elbow against the slope of your shoulder as he pulls the gun into position. And though you automatically bristle at the contact, you keep yourself still as he cocks the rifle back and aims.

He fires. The recoil jerks his arm backward and knocks him against your back, while the shot itself rings through your ears like a broken bell. From behind, there’s the sound of a man screaming someone else’s name. You turn your head and see a body tumbling off a horse — grimacing, you quickly switch your attention back to the task at hand and concentrate hard on navigating through the brush instead.

\------

The gap between you and the other riders narrows and the shots ring closer. A bullet ricochets off his canteen. Another comes close enough you can nearly feel the wind of its trajectory against your cheek. 

You’ve barely reached the edge of the woods when the horse begins to stumble. You urge her on faster with your heels, but the poor beast’s been carrying two riders for the better part of the day already, and she’s on the verge of exhaustion. Her breaths are labored and her eyes frantic, the rhythm of her strides taking on an erratic beat as she slows.

“She can’t go much further!” you yell out.

“Shit,” Arthur curses under his breath. “You know how to use a shotgun?”

“Yeah, but —”

“We’re gonna have to dismount when we get some decent cover. Grab the double barrel.”

You blanch. “What?”

“Just grab it!” he snaps. The edge of urgency in his voice sends you frantically unlatching the gun from saddle’s scabbard and clutching it to your chest.

He loops his arm around your waist. “Hold on to me.”

You barely have time to put an arm around his shoulders before he swings a leg over the saddle, keeping one foot lodged in the stirrup for momentum, and throws you both off.


	12. In which you become acquainted with the finer points of human anatomy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> content warning: graphic violence/gore

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one's a little experimental. let me know if it reads strangely.

“Look at me,” Arthur says. “It’s over.”

Everything is dulled, sounds muted and colors blurred, the only thing ringing sharp and true being the gun in your hands. Heavy and warm, the metal bore still radiating with residual heat from that final shot.

“You can put that down now. C’mon, give it here… ”

His fingers pry yours loose as he gently takes the shotgun back. Now emptied, your hands curl into fists instead, nails digging deep into your palms as your precipitous calm evaporates, the frozen silence giving way to ragged breathing and an uncontrollable shiver that grips you whole.

Your eyes are so wide that the whites of them glint in the light of the setting sun. And again he remembers the sparrow trembling in his cupped hands, the dying flutter of its heartbeat vibrating hard against his skin.

Slowly, tentatively, he reaches towards you, keeping his motions steady and giving you plenty of time to move away from him should you wish. But all you do is stare downwards, looking at the dead man’s spilled entrails as if you might divine some hidden meaning in their array.

Arthur gingerly puts his hands on your shoulders as he steps directly in front of the corpse, deliberately blocking it from view. “Don’t look at him. Look at me.”

———

How terrible the body when it is broken — the familiar visage cracked open to reveal the pulpy mass that has always lived beneath. The jagged edge of broken bone, the viscera shiny and wet from where it slithers forth.

There is a jolt of mingled disgust and fear that strikes us in the face of our own unraveling. Disgust in the knowing that the same grotesque display dwells in us as well, fear in the recognition of our own unavoidable fates.

———

You’d hit the ground hard when Arthur flung the both of you from the horse, and lain stunned in the red Lemoyne mud until he’d grabbed you by the collar. He’d pulled you upright with all the gentle grace of a hound breaking a hare’s neck, then dragged you behind a very conveniently placed boulder.

“Keep your head down,” he said. “And stay close to me.”

You looked down at the shotgun you in your hands, then back at him. It occured to you suddenly that there was an easy, obvious way out of all this. Just shoot him, call out to the rival gang that you’d done their work for them, and maybe they’d let you off, maybe even give you a horse to ride back to —

“Don’t even think about it,” he‘d said, without even bothering to glance in your direction. “Right now, I’m all that’s standin’ between you and them. And trust me — they get ahold of you, you’re gonna wish it was me that killed you instead.”

“What?” you blustered. “I wasn’t going to —”

“Shut up and get that gun ready. Sit with your back against the rock… yeah, that’s it. I ain’t really expecting you to help much, so just keep your head down and cover me if you can.”

———

A curious calm had settled over you as you’d sat there crouched beside him, your hands fastened around a gun you barely knew how to use.

_ It doesn’t matter what I do now _ , you’d thought.  _ Won’t have to live with the consequences because I’m about to get my fucking head blown off. _

The stark certainty of death took the edge off things. An unexpected wave of relief had accompanied its realization, and it was this very deathbed conversion to fatalism that made it possible for you to not piss yourself the moment you heard approaching voices in the woods.

“... saw them jump.”

“can’t have gone far, keep looking… ’”

“... a woman with him, d’you think?”

Immediately you’d moved to pull the pump handle of the shotgun back, only to have Arthur grab your wrist. “Wait for my lead,” he said quietly. “And when it starts, keep your eyes on those trees behind us. Shoot anything that moves.”

———

And then the confused rush of violence. Gunfire, chipped fragments of rock flying everywhere. The disturbingly shrill scream of a horse as it had collapsed onto the ground, the weight of it echoed in the shiver of earth rippling in the wake of its impact.

“That’s two down,” you’d heard Arthur mutter. “Five more to go.” With the practiced ease of a professional, he’d pulled the bolt of the rifle backwards and quickly slotted the new shells into place. 

You still don’t know whether it was courage or stupidity that compelled you to peek over the edge of the boulder. But peek you did, and in response you received a focused volley of bullets aimed directly at your head.

Had Arthur not immediately yanked you backwards and sent you tumbling against him, your skull would probably be sporting a nice collection of windows right about now.

“Idiot! You  _ tryin’ _ to get killed?”

“There’s only three of them,” you’d said quietly, voice shaking with the realization. “I only saw three over there, so the other two…”

“I know,” he replied, brusquely pushing you off his lap. “So keep on your goddamn guard instead of playing groundhog.”

———

The last time you raised a gun to someone, Feng was still alive and the thought of smuggling opium had never once crossed your mind. 

You hadn’t pulled the trigger then. Probably couldn’t have, paralyzed with fear as you were.

But you’re a different person now, aren’t you? 

———

Only three men visible. That meant there were two somewhere hidden, possibly skirting the cover the boulder had been providing and approaching through the trees. 

The surrounding area he’d tasked you with watching seemed a scrambled green mosaic, the branches and leaves and bushes woven together in a featureless mass. Your eyes darted wildly from shadow to shadow, each one stretching long and thin in the dimming evening light.

You’d panicked, then. Not so ready to die after all.

Death in the abstract is easy. Even with its surety, even with cavalier acceptance, the reality of it never really hits until its coming lies directly in the line of sight. 

(Because you’ve always been a coward, haven’t you? Didn’t you once say that you’d give your life for the man you loved, only to draw back at that very last instant?)

———

A blur of movement in the trees. That’s all it was. Could have been a person, could have been an animal, could have been ripple of leaves stirred by the wind.

With that thought in mind, it hadn’t been hard to pull the trigger. 

In the darkening woods, the man had been little more than a vague silhouette. But the sudden illumination of the muzzle flash lit up his face, throwing into sharp relief his green eyes, his wide open mouth, one hand flung uselessly in front of him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was originally part of one hugeass chapter that i've chopped in half for the sake of brevity. so because i've got some pretty decent progress on it, the next chapter should be out pretty soon.
> 
> currently taking arthur/reader requests over at [my tumblr](https://shootybangbang.tumblr.com).


	13. In which you (hopefully) don’t get gangrene

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning: copious gore

_“Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window, and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all.”_

_— Joseph Heller, Catch 22_

 

Arthur is saying something to you with an uncharacteristic softness in his voice, but when you shift your gaze upwards you do not see him. You register the various components of him — leather jacket, dark blond hair, gun-belt — but you cannot fit them together into a composite image of a man.

Because all you can see is the collection of parts strewn across the ground. Already, the bluebottle flies have begun to gather, touching their delicate black feet to the warm abundance laid before them. Already, a trail of ants leads its inexorable march across the dead man’s fingers. All those things the living brush off as mere annoyance come so quickly to define the dead.

———

The man had stumbled out from behind the bushes with his stomach split open, the cascade of his own viscera held between his fingers, murmuring in a quiet, disbelieving voice, “Oh my god, oh my god… ”

“Danny!” someone had screamed. In the stranger’s voice a raw grief, a barely restrained sob. “That’s my brother, you bitch!”

The silhouette of the second man had stepped out from the cover of the trees and fired. In the shade of the oaks, the three shots flared bright as stars.

Two of the stranger’s bullets went wide, missing you completely. The last one ricocheted off the rock face you’d been crouching against, the path of the rebound cutting close enough to tear your shirtsleeve.

In response, Arthur shot only once. This time the only ensuing noise was the muted thump of something heavy falling across the grass.

———

“You had to do it.” The words sound well-worn, as if he’s said them many times before. “It was either you or him.”

 _So why me,_ you think to yourself. _By what virtue should it be me?_

———

The gutted man took his dying slow, writhing in the red mud of his own making, digging his fingernails into the earth as he’d wrenched himself towards you. Every breath a strained wet gasp, his mouth opening and closing like that of a landed fish, but his eyes filled with a hysterical determination that you knew all too well.

“You,” he snarled, and the concentrated force of hate in his stare held you fast, like a pin driven through a beetle. Inch by inch he crawled, one hand clutched to his belly in an attempt to keep himself whole. And though you aimed the barrel of the gun towards his face, you could not bring yourself to pull the trigger a second time.

———

Because hadn’t Feng fought, hadn’t he too clawed at the ground and tried to drag himself home, in those last moments gripped by an urge insensate, the instinct of the dying animal to crawl somewhere familiar to die?

Hadn’t he wept with his teeth bared, his tears not of despair but rather a raw fury at the growing certainty of death?

But not accepting it. No, never accepting it.

At first you thought you might save him. Maybe the bullet pierced through clean, you thought, and you prayed for it then, prayed to the gods you’d long forsaken — to Christ and all his accompanying saints, to the bodhisattva, to the half-forgotten idols tucked away in the gunsmith’s shop — promising your everlasting devotion should they let him survive this.

You’d screamed in the streets for a doctor. You’d begged Feng to lie still, put your hands over the wound in an attempt to staunch the flow of blood. But when he looked towards you, it was as if he were peering through glass. For in the eyes of the dying, all that is not essential melts down to nothing, and in those last trembling moments he spoke the name of the one he loved the most.

“Meilan,” he gasped. “I’m almost there.”

———

In the back of his mind, Feng must have known the impossibility of ever reaching home. And Danny, as he pulled the wreckage of his broken body across the grass, must have realized that same futility.

But you’ve known some men to die viciously. Nastily, possessed of a delirious anger that defies all reason. For they are convinced of their own immortality until proven otherwise, and even then they struggle onwards, shuddering with contempt for the absolute, to the very last moment convinced of the possibility of escape.

Danny died only feet from where you’d shot him. He died with his teeth flecked with mud, reaching for an apparition of a woman — because isn’t that what you were to him? Just the embodiment of his death, holding the instrument of his demise?

———

The other three men must be dead, else Arthur would not be standing here, speaking his meaningless reassurances to you. But you have no memory of it beyond the chorus of shots in the background of your dissociative haze.

It’s the unpleasant shock of pain that brings you back to your senses.

“Goddamn.” Arthur’s hand slips from the slope of your shoulder down to the tear in your sleeve. “That bullet nicked you worse than I thought.”

The cut had initially registered as little more than a hot streak of metal running over your skin. A sharp sting, a brief burn — but not bad enough to dwell on. Now though, with the wane of adrenaline and the onset of reality, it returns with a renewed intensity.

”Oh. That’s… ” you wince as you touch your fingers to the wound. The bloom of blood spreading through your shirt is difficult to discern against its dark fabric, but when you pull your hand away, your fingertips come away bright red. “That actually looks pretty bad.”

“Give it here,” he says, unfastening the bandanna from around his neck.

When he pulls the makeshift bandage taut around your upper arm, the pressure sends a branching jolt of pain from your shoulder to your fingertips that brings tears to your eyes. You let out a strangled little whimper that sounds like the noise a squirrel might make when stepped upon.

“It hurts, I know.” Again that gentle, hushed tone of voice. He ties off the bandanna and gives you an awkward pat on the back. “But gangrene’d hurt worse.”

G _etting gangrene is probably the only way this day could possibly get any shittier_ , you think to yourself.

And as if on cue, it starts to rain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please consider leaving a comment — they mean a lot to writers and help keep us motivated.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to contact me @ [shootybangbang.tumblr.com](https://shootybangbang.tumblr.com/)


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